As many as 10,000 batteries Sony-made in December 2005 are now being recalled by Toshiba

Toshiba announced plans to recall 10,000 notebook battery
packs due to possible fire hazards. Even though only 5,100 of the
Sony-made batteries are faulty, Toshiba wants to make sure all defective
batteries are collected. The offending batteries were created solely for
Toshiba.

A number of
companies were forced to recall batteries do to serious safety concerns,
highlighted after an IBM ThinkPad burst into flames, along with other reported
incidents of fire. Korean Air and QANTAs temporarily banned the use of
Dell and Apple notebooks, regardless of what kind of internal battery was used.

The recalled batteries were manufactured in December 2005 for the following
Toshiba notebook products: Dynabook, Dynabook Satellite, Satellite and
the Tecra -- and were available in the U.S., Japan, Europe, China and
Australia.

Sony finally turned over as many as 9.6 million batteries used by a number of
different notebook manufacturers. The cost of recalling and replacing all
of the batteries should be minuscule compared to the large recalls that took
place last year.